larger than that of all the theaters of New York; but there was
no longer a voice to cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The sea has
forsaken the harbor, which is now a pestilential morass. We passed
through the ruins of the custom-house, now miles inland, and found a
single Turkish soldier on guard. The peasants who cultivate some parts
of the plain come from distant villages, and fever, filth, and beggary
reign in Ephesus.

Had the twenty thousand patrons of the drama, in the thirty-one theaters
of New York, honored the theater of Laodicea with their presence, its
polite citizens would have accommodated them all on the reserved seats,
retiring themselves to ten thousand less commodious sittings, and to two
less gigantic theaters. While yet busy in the erection of their splendid
places of public amusement, Jesus said, "_I will spew thee out of my
mouth._" "The circus, and three stately theaters of Laodicea, are
peopled with wolves and foxes," says Gibbon.

The church was spewed out of Christ's mouth, and the city too. It has
been overturned by earthquakes, and is now nothing but a series of
magnificent ruins, from which, however, ample evidence may be collected
of its former magnificence. Those of the aqueduct, the theater, and the
amphitheater, are remarkable; in the latter an inscription has been
found showing that it was in course of erection when the Lord dictated
the warning to its people. But the warning was unheeded, and now the
whole space inside the city walls is strewn with fragments of columns
and pedestals.

A Lydian capitalist once deposited in the vaults of Sardis more specie
than is now in circulation in this whole continent. But Jesus said,
"_Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. If, therefore, thou
shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not
know what hour I will come upon thee._"

"Sardis," says Gibbon, "is a miserable village." A later writer (Durbin)
tells us that the Turks say, "Every one who builds a house in Sardis
dies soon, and avoid the spot." Arundell, in his account of his visit to
the seven churches, says: "If I were asked what impresses the mind most
strongly on beholding Sardis, I should say, its indescribable
_solitude_, like the darkness of Egypt, that could be felt. So deep the
solitude of the spot, once the lady of kingdoms, produces a feeling of
desolate abandonment in the mind which can never be forgotten." Connect
this feeling with the m